Category Archives: Drama

Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow

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No doubt many crime fiction readers eagerly anticipated Presumed Guilty, Scott Turow’s new legal thriller. I know I did, having been a fan ever since his debut with Presumed Innocent almost 40 years ago. I looked forward to seeing what his character, Rusty Sabich, is up to, now that he’s in his 70s. And, I relish the clash of wits in a good courtroom drama.

In the current book, Rusty’s tenure as a judge in fictional Kindle County, Minnesota, is finished, and he’s moved about a hundred miles north to rural/small town Skageon County. He’s living on a lake and has found a new live-in love, Bea Housley, a school principal.

Bea is not baggage-free. (Which of us is?) She has an irascible father and an adopted son, Aaron, in his early twenties who spent jail time for drug possession with intent to distribute (the drugs actually belonged to his on-and-off girlfriend, Mae Potter). Out on parole now, Aaron has to abide by certain rules: no driving, no associating with drug addicts, and no leaving the county. He’s in Bea and Rusty’s custody and living with them. Thankfully, he’s pulling his life together.

Mae, the beautiful young woman Aaron’s loved for years, remains a problem. He should not be associating with her, not only because it’s a violation of his parole, but because she’s unstable and manipulative. She’s like a tornado through the lives of her friends and family. But young love is what it is. She and Aaron are secretly considering marriage, and he proposes a weekend camping trip to sort out their future once and for all. No phones, no distractions.

The trip ends with a big argument between them, during which Aaron realizes Mae will never change, that she will always be totally self-absorbed, that people’s advice that she’s not good for him is correct, that he’s done. He hitchhikes home, just as Rusty and Bea were about to report his disappearance to his parole officer.

He makes it home. Mae does not. Two weeks later her decomposed body is found, apparently strangled. Aaron is devastated. Her family is too, and immediately points to Aaron as the probable culprit. That fact that he’s Black and Mae was white hovers over him. Is this why they never approved of Mae and Aaron’s relationship? Mae’s father is the Prosecuting Attorney for Skageon County and puts a lot of law enforcement pressure on Aaron. Eventually, Aaron comes to trial.

Much of the book is the unfolding courtroom drama. I liked that part a lot. It was fascinating to see how the defense team tries to unravel the prosecutor’s evidence, making what at first sounds devastating at least open to interpretation. If you enjoy courtroom scenes, you’ll find some riveting ones here.

But at 530 pages, the book has lots of other stuff packed in as well. There’s too much backstory about Rusty, Bea, and their families and, for my taste, way too much navel-gazing by Rusty around various issues. I recognized that he loves Bea and didn’t need it rehashed multiple times. He agonizes at great length about whether he should become Aaron’s defense attorney, as Bea pleads with him to. He shouldn’t, for obvious reasons, and you read all of them, many times. But of course he’s going to do it, or else what’s in those 530 pages? To complicate Rusty’s emotional state further, he and Bea have a serious falling out over an issue I found frankly implausible.

To sum up, while the trial scenes were great, much of the rest of the story was, for me, seriously over-written. It’s like eating three Christmas dinners in one evening. You’re so stuffed it’s hard to say you actually enjoyed the experience.

Jewels of Scandal and Desire

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For a long time, I’ve had the glimmer of an idea for a story about a jeweler for British royalty. You’ll remember how Elizabeth II always wore a lovely pin on her jacket when she was out in public. Somebody must have made them, cleaned them, repaired them. And somebody must have thought about ways to steal them. Somebody besides me, that is.

You can imagine how my interest was piqued by an American Ancestors program “Jewels of Scandal & Desire: British Jewelry Collections and Country Houses,” hosted by Curt DiCamillo, an authority on British historic houses and the decorative arts. He has actually seen some of that jewelry up close, in museum exhibits and when he was presented to the late Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, and The Prince of Wales.

No doubt this is a topic that could have a month’s worth of lectures, and in an hour he had to just hit the highlights and, in some cases, the lowlights of gems among the British royalty. Here are a few anecdotes.

DiCamillo began with Daisy Fellowes, heiress to the Singer sewing fortune. She had an unhappy life, but she did have fabulous jewelry, including the tutti-frutti necklace pictured above with 4500 emeralds, as well as rubies and sapphires, designed by Cartier and now in the Cartier Collection. Cartier also made the spectacular tiara owned by Lady Hugh Montagu Allan (above), who was aboard the Lusitania in 1915 when it was struck by a German torpedo and sunk. One of her maids saved the tiara and Lady Allan was badly injured, but her two daughters were among the 1,150 people lost.

The Earl and Countess of March were tied up for perhaps twelve hours in early 2016 when thieves invaded Goodwood House in West Sussex. They stole jewelry that was not only valuable in monetary terms, but the haul included an emerald and diamond ring King Charles II had given to one of his French mistresses, an ancestor of the Earl. A stolen tiara, containing hundreds of diamonds, was probably disassembled, Di Camillo said. Such pieces are almost never recovered, because loose diamonds are much harder to identify and easier to sell.

While diamonds are often the most prized of the four main gemstones, they’re actually the least valuable. Most valuable are emeralds, followed by rubies, sapphires, and then diamonds. DiCamillo says De Beers has millions of diamonds in warehouses that they don’t release; by limiting availability, they keep the prices high. In the 1700s, diamonds had been found only in India. In the 1800s, they were discovered in Brazil and, later, in South Africa and Russia, so are not as rare as one might think.

A hundred years ago, Margaret Whigham Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, was considered the best-dressed woman in the world. She lived quite a scandalous life and had numerous lovers. She even made it into a Cole Porter song. But in 1943 she fell 40 feet down an elevator shaft. Although she recovered, she permanently lost her sense of smell. She and the Duke of Argyll lived in beautiful Inverara Castle (where some Downton Abbey scenes were filmed). Alas, in 1954, her jewelry was stolen by cat burglars and never recovered. Eventually the Duke divorced her for infidelity (he was no peach, either). Once at the top of society, she died in a nursing home in 1992.

Lots of good stories could be spun from these little episodes, but they all seem to carry the same message: “wealth does not guarantee happiness.”

Weekend Movie Pick: The Penguin Lessons

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Although dramatic actors often have trouble with comedy, it’s remarkable how comic actors can do such wonderful jobs with dramatic roles. Think Robin Williams, Steve Carell, Melissa McCarthy. Maybe it’s their timing, or how comfortable they are being “all in,” or how carefully they listen and react, I don’t know. But the chance to see (mostly) comedian Steve Coogan in a straight role was irresistible. You may remember him from his pairing with Rob Bryden in the hilarious “The Trip” series and the lovely The Lost King.

The Penguin Lessons was directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Magpie Murders), and written by Jeff Pope and Tom Michell, based on the book by Michell (see the trailer here). The story recounts Michell’s experience working as an English professor at an upscale boys’ school in Argentina during the harrowing time of the military overthrow and all the “disappearances” of protestors (some 30,000 of whom were never returned to their families, dead or alive). The school, run by a rigid head master (Jonathan Pryce) has a strict “no pets” policy, so when Michell finds himself in possession of a penguin, he has to hide it. But the penguin turns out to be exactly the catalyst that helps everyone to become their better selves—better students, better teachers, better family. When the granddaughter of the school’s housekeeper is kidnapped by the military, the stakes become serious.

The plot isn’t groundbreaking, but it is very soothing and never becomes sappy, as such films so often do. The performances of Coogan and the housekeeper (Vivian El Jaber) feel absolutely real. Björn Gustafsson is a clueless science professor. The penguin is charming.

If you need a break from the news of the day, this is a good one! And, it appears, audiences agree. In case it isn’t showing in your area, I think you can see the whole movie here.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 84%; audiences: 94%.

Theater Extravaganza!

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Last weekend we enjoyed an unforgettable theater weekend. Thanks to gifts, we did not have to remortgage the house to snag tickets for two of the hottest, most interesting shows currently on Broadway: Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in Othello and George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck.

For more than 400 years, audiences have found Shakespeare’s plays so perfectly capture human motives, failings, and dilemmas that they continue to offer important commentary, however far removed we are from their creation. Good Night and Good Luck, an adaptation of the 2005 film, is set some 70 years ago—an eternity in the age of texting and instant messaging—but it too lent itself painful timeliness. Do such works speak to audiences today? They did last weekend. Is their message lost on today’s audiences? Not for a New York minute.

Othello, you’ll remember, is the story of a vaunted Venetian general whose chief aide, feigning loyalty but secretly vindictive, sows doubt about the faithfulness of Othello’s wife, Desdemona. Suspicion builds, and this false story eventually so enrages Othello that he murders her and, in this version, the play ends with death upon death. What devastating power lies have. And, once accepted, how difficult they are to dislodge.

A major theme of the play is reputation. Iago famously says, “Who steals my purse steals trash; ʼtis something, nothing . . . But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.” Even in his last speech, the suicidal Othello is concerned about how he will be perceived thereafter.

In Shakespeare’s time, although news of a person’s transgressions—real or imagined or maliciously crafted—might eventually reach the ears of many people or the few who mattered; today, such reports are instantly accessible to a worldwide audience and wreak havoc with the ideas of privacy and safety and innocence. Whether they are true or not seems irrelevant. The point is to hurt. In the face of this onslaught, we are “perplexed in the extreme,” as Othello says, and damaged in some cases, beyond repair.

George Clooney has had a long interest in the topic of how fear stifles political debate. In this project, he and co-writer Grant Heslov took the Army-McCarthy hearings as their subject. Senator Joseph McCarthy was infamous for his sensational accusations that various individuals were Communists based on slender or no evidence. His particular targets were the federal government, universities, and the film industry. It was a fearful time. Tremendous pressure was brought on television journalist Edward R. Murrow and his co-producer Fred Friendly to tread lightly around McCarthy, as anyone who opposed him would very likely become his next target.

Nevertheless, Murrow and Friendly produced a famous See It Now documentary using clips of McCarthy himself and his wild accusations. Commenting on the Senator’s words, Murrow said, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty” and warning against letting fear push the country into an age of unreason. The production definitely wants to establish parallels with current-day politics, and one of its biggest laughs comes when a newsman laments that he hasn’t quite understood what’s been happening in the past few years and says, “It’s like all the sensible people flew to Europe and left us here.”

Both plays benefit from excellent casts, including Clooney and Gyllenhaal, who are not stage actors. Othello has a spare stage that adapts to whatever configuration is needed, whereas Good Night and Good Luck has a very specific set, a 1950s newsroom, with all the chaos of a production about to go on air. Both work.

An Irish Classic: the International

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hotel bar, barman
(photo: shankar s, creative commons license)

“If I had known history was to be written that Sunday in the International Hotel I might have made an effort to get out of bed before teatime,” writes Daniel Hamilton, an 18-year-old Belfast bartender and narrator of Glenn Patterson’s novel The International: A Novel of Belfast.

The history he refers to is the meeting to launch the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), an organization formed to focus attention on discrimination against Northern Ireland’s mostly Catholic nationalist minority. We call the succeeding three decades of violence and despair The Troubles, and The International “is the best book about the Troubles ever written,” says Irish author and Booker-Prize-winner Anne Enright.

Funny thing is, there’s almost no overt violence in this book, apart from the fact it’s set in a busy bar with lots of coming and going and football on the telly and political shenanigans where money changes hands and gay men and straight women hoping to meet someone and people who should have stopped drinking hours before ordering another and weddings upstairs in the hotel, at one of which the clergyman plays an accordion. In other words, enough latent violence in reserve to keep the average semi-sober person on his toes.

The principal action of the novel takes place during on Saturday evening, January 28, 1967, the night before the big meeting, larded with Danny Hamilton’s memories of other times and barroom encounters. His minutely observed portrayal of everyday life as seen from behind the bar is heartbreaking when, with the lens of hindsight, the reader knows how soon it will all be gone, sucked into a slowly unwinding catastrophe of bombs and gunfire.

The quote at the top of this piece opens the book, and these words about a barmen who was shot dead, Peter Ward, also age 18, help close it:

I can’t tell you much else about him, except that those who knew him thought the world of him. He is, I realise, an absence in this story. I wish it were not so, but guns do that, create holes which no amount of words can fill.

I wrote about this book and a visit to Princeton by Belfast author Glenn Patterson a few years ago, and it seems apt to return to it on St. Patrick’s Day, especially given his writing’s emphasis on history and politics and his deep sense of place. He said that “when history looks back at our present, it will see that what we thought we were at and what we were at, really, were entirely different.” When we think about our current moment in America, that is a sobering thought.

Here’s Glenn Patterson’s list of his top 10 books about Belfast, compiled in 2012.

Society of Lies — Hometown Thriller

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Reading a book set in your own home town is always kind of a kick, and people with a Princeton connection may want to read it for that reason alone. I enjoyed the inside references to places in the Princeton area in Lauren Ling Brown’s new thriller, but the personalities she describes don’t ring true. She makes clear that Society of Lies doesn’t reflect either real characters or social groups at Princeton University, where she did her undergraduate work, and I hope that’s true! Still, you’re forced to wonder to what extent her college experience is reflected here. Like the pair of sisters who are the novel’s main characters, and who encounter prejudice and insults, the author is Black and Asian.

Older sister Maya is visiting the campus a decade after her own graduation to witness the graduation of her sister, Naomi. The return to Princeton immediately triggers waves of memories, especially those surrounding the eating club—Sterling—where both Maya and Naomi were members. Maya also is haunted by the unexpected death of one of her friends ten years earlier. (Eating clubs—combination dining hall and social club—are a nearly 150-year-old tradition at Princeton.) Brown’s fictional Sterling Club is the elite of the elite and has a corrupt secret society at its heart. With all the positives that membership in a club like Sterling can offer, there’s always a downside. It’s tempting to misuse that influence.

This is all brought back to Maya in the story’s first chapter when, on the eve of graduation, Naomi is found drowned. The story timeline ping-pongs between Naomi’s last few months on campus, and Maya’s own university experiences. The similarities can make it hard to keep events straight, despite the clearly labeled short chapters. The extent of drinking and drug use—prescription and otherwise—may be realistic, I can’t say. But when the characters’ resulting confusion and flawed memories repeatedly lead to story red herrings, it became tiresome.

Although Brown has some surprises in store, she plays fair and provides the clues needed to back up the story’s conclusions. Although her writing style is promising, her prose is weighted down with unnecessary verbiage that makes the going seem slow. It isn’t necessary to describe characters’ emotions repeatedly, when their reactions are patently understandable. We’ve all (probably) had friends who were stuck in a romantic rut, like Naomi is with Liam, her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, boyfriend again, ex-again, and we’ve all (probably) eventually lost patience with those friends.

The Dynasty That Keeps on Giving

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Last week, American Ancestors hosted a Zoom presentation about potential?? English ancestors—those lusty, murderous Tudors. I’ve been a fan of stage, screen, and tv interpretations of Tudorabilia starting with the BBCs The Six Wives of Henry VIII, now more than 50 years ago! and still memorable, on to Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), up to the salacious (and highly inaccurate) The Tudors in 2007-2010, and the three volumes of the late Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning novels, which started with Wolf Hall, through their stage and television versions (Mark Rylance at his very best). So, of course I couldn’t miss this latest program, led by Curt Di Camillo, curator of Special Collections for the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Here are some tidbits.

Di Camillo started with a little background on what paved the way for the Tudors, and that was the War of the Roses, the Plantagenets—the longest running royal house in Britain—symbolized by the White Rose and the Lancasters (red rose). When Henry VII seized the throne from the reviled Richard III, he created the “Tudor Rose,” red and white a bit of transparent pandering.

(As an aside, if you missed last year’s film, The Lost King, the true story of a persistent English woman who went on a hunt for Richard III’s body, which scholars searched for fruitlessly for centuries, rent it!.)

But what I learned about the first Tudor, Henry VII, was less well known (to me at least). He was reviled as well, considered a usurper, and, possibly worst of all, he was Welch. He was under such threat he created a special bodyguard and designed their uniforms. You recognize them as the Beefeaters, who still wear Henry’s design today. For Britain, at least, Di Camillo says, Henry Tudor’s accession to the crown in 1485 represented the end of the Middle Ages.

He undertook a number of acts to establish his legitimacy. He introduced a gold coin, called a sovereign, that bore his image with the trappings of the monarchy, he married Elizabeth of York (who passed on her red-hair genes to her son and grandchildren). And he added the Henry VII Lady Chapel to Westminster Abbey, which now holds the remains of many English kings and queens. But it was up to his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn, to employ England’s first spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, setting the stage for many great spy novels to come.

More information:
American Ancestors/New England Historic Genealogical Society
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Lost King
Elizabeth’s Spy Master: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War that Saved England (have not read this one)

Last Night at Villa Lucia by Simon McCleave

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What could be more appealing than a murder mystery set in an elegant villa high on a hill overlooking the Tuscan countryside? Prolific crime novelist Simon McCleave’s Last Night at Villa Lucia feels like a vacation from the first page.

A few flies in the ointment—or in this case, vodka—soon appear. The middle-aged woman who owns Villa Lucia has a significant drinking problem, once controlled with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, but now seriously relapsed. This, and the death that follows, is all foreshadowed in an unnecessary prologue, lifted from a place well into the story. Chapter One rewinds to two days earlier with the arrival of a new set of guests—the overbearing, deeply entitled Harry Collard, his mousy wife Zoe, and their handsome nineteen-year-old son, Charlie.

When the family arrives at the villa, they find their hostess, Cerys, who’s divorced, and her luscious daughter Lowri, about Charlie’s age. One plot point boldly forecasts itself from the moment Harry meets Lowri.

So. At least until the police arrive, you have two couples (one dad absent, but very “present” in the minds of his ex-wife and daughter). Two young adults. And, rounding out the cast, the two people who keep the place humming—Lucia De Nardi, the maid, who grew up in the villa before her uncle lost possession of it, a sore point for sure, and her husband, Lorenzo, who has a sketchy past and takes care of the pool and the gardens.

You see some of the English husbands’ arrogant behavior, in real time, in flashback, and in what the women say about them. This story might fail the Bechdel test—which checks whether a book or movie “features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man.” (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Granted, Cerys and Zoe do occasionally talk about fashion or food.

You know from the prologue that someone ends up in the infinity pool, and they aren’t swimming. That death occurs, about two days into the Collards’ stay, and by then you probably have a favored candidate for drowning and a universe of potential motives.

McCleave effectively conveys the enervating heat, the villa’s isolation, and the effects of too much alcohol, so that the arrival of the sober Policia di Stato Detective Franco Saachi is a relief. Naturally, the villa occupants don’t tell him everything. At least not right off. In a postscript, McCleave tells readers that his intentions for this book were to explore toxic masculinity, alcoholism, and abusive relationships. He achieved this goal, with a few caveats. Making both husbands so very toxic doesn’t give the narrative much nuance. It was good to see Cerys and Zoe open up to each other, and good for them, too. Cerys’s preoccupation with alcohol became a bit redundant, but it was probably an accurate way to portray this particular addiction. McCleave does give his characters some grace at the book’s end, as a reward—to you and them—for suffering through their travails. Meanwhile, you can enjoy the spectacular setting.

Looking for a Weekend Movie?

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Here are brief takes on four films we’ve seen lately. All have good points. The one I enjoyed most is first.

The Cowboy and the Queen
You may have seen previous coverage of horse whisperer Monty Roberts. Now you see him in a reflective mood, looking back over the shape of his career. Son of an abusive dad, he was determined not to follow that path (trailer). By watching horses in the wild, he began to understand how they communicated, and he adopted their approach in his training. “Breaking horses,” he says, amounts to breaking their spirit; they’re abused until they give up. He doesn’t do it that way. So, where does the Queen come in? We’re talking about Elizabeth II, late monarch of Britain, who read articles about Roberts and wanted him to coach some of her equerries in his methods. Like most traditional U.S. horsemen, they were skeptical. They relied on using their aggressive techniques for a week or two until the horse would accept a saddle and, ultimately, a rider. Roberts could achieve this in less than twenty minutes. The Queen comes across beautifully, and so does the cowboy! A real feel-good film. For a fictional take on humane horse-training, there’s the wonderful 2018 film, The Rider.

The Critic
You can’t fault Ian McKellan’s portrayal of an odious 1930s theater critic for a dying London newspaper (trailer). He delights in skewering the shows and performers he reviews, and, although at first I found him a nice contrast to the starchy newspaper publisher, when he roped an ambitious female lead into his manipulative schemes, I gave up on him. The performances are all good, but he’s no hero.
Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Rating: 47%; Audiences: 73%.

Between the Temples
Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is the nebbishy cantor of a synagogue with a transparently ambitious rabbi (trailer). Through stress and anxiety, he’s lost his voice and is near suicide. Coming to his rescue (in more ways than one) is Mrs. Kessler (Carol Kane), his elementary school choral teacher. No one in their families is sure what the relationship is, exactly, they just know they don’t like it. Some good jokes, some outlandish family behavior. A pleasant film with a few slow spots.
Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Rating: 85%; Audiences: 41%.

Skincare
This thriller loosely inspired by a true story, centers on a Hollywood entrepreneur who has developed her own line of facial products, using European (fancy!) ingredients (trailer). Her struggling business faces an existential crisis when a competitor moves in across the street. Violence ensues (nothing too graphic). Entertaining, and Elizabeth Banks is perfect as the increasingly frantic beauty maven. Coincidentally, I recently read a short piece about her in The New Yorker, where she talked about difficulty getting parts in her early career, in part because “I wasn’t pretty enough.” In this film, she’s a knockout!
Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Rating: 65%; Audiences: 64%.

Sense and Sensibility: See it!

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Congratulate The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey for producing a version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility that lives up to its title! It showcases both a fine theatrical sense and the complicated interpersonal sensibilities of the classic story. Adapted by British playwright, theatre director, and screenwriter Jessica Swale and directed for STNJ by Nisi Sturgis, it opened September 7 and closes September 22.

It’s in 1797 England that we find the Dashwood family, comprising a widow (played by Lynette R. Freeman) and her three daughters—Elinor (Mandi Masden), a model of good sense, Marianne of heightened feelings (Billie Wyatt), and inquisitive, adolescent Margaret (Terra Chaney). A conniving sister-in-law (Kayla Ryan Walsh) deprives them of their inheritance, and they must retire to a modest country life. The two older girls are of marriageable age, and Elinor falls for Edward Ferrars (Patrick Andrew Jones), previously engaged in secret and seemingly unattainable; Marianne falls for the dashing Willoughby (Christian Frost) who returns her affection, and she is also adored by mature, reliable—and therefore unappealing—Colonel Brandon (Sean Mahan).

That group of actors makes up most of the cast, except for utility infielder Patrick Toon, who appears in many guises and has dozens of offstage costume changes, portraying each character to perfection. In fact, except for the two older sisters (Masden and Wyatt), all cast members play multiple roles, including that of stagehand. It was a particular pleasure to see Chaney move so convincingly from little sister and budding naturalist to sly fiancée to a street gossip. These multiple personas all work, except when Mrs. Dashwood reappears as Willoughby’s fiancée. The age difference was insurmountable, but all the other female cast members were otherwise engaged, one might say. Masden and Wyatt’s strong performances make you yearn for the happiness of these young women. Lovely costumes too, thanks to Sophie S. Schneider.

Swale’s adaptation is faithful to the novel and some of the judicious cuts Emma Thompson made for the 1995 screenplay. Fidelity to material and memory produces deep associations, even if act one does become rather long. The versatile set by Brittany Vasta nicely accommodates, with some well-choreographed rearrangements of furniture, the various houses, rooms, and outdoor settings where the story takes place, leaving much to the imagination except for lovely verdure.

Austen’s works, including this one, continue to capture audiences by their fundamental emotional truths. The characters in Sense and Sensibility are trapped in the conventions of their time—women didn’t work or inherit, honorable men lived up to their marital commitments—yet most find their way to happiness in ways that satisfy them and the audiences of today. Modern constraints may be different, but they nevertheless exist. STNJ productions are hosted at Drew University in Madison, N.J. (easily reachable from NYC by train). For tickets, call the box office at 973-408-5600 or visit the Box Office online.